In the end, we literally saw him off, but without saying goodbye. When he found his train, his wife was the first thing in sight - a smaller woman than we'd expected, who was wearing an Austro-Hungarian kind of hat and carrying a parrot in a pink-painted birdcage. She was giving orders to a porter, a conductor and the Minister's driver in a way that discouraged us from approaching. Instead, Oktyabrina and I watched from the opposite platform. She’d hardly said a word to me all morning, except to mutter acidly about the funeral, as if I were somehow at fault. ‘And this is the miserable send-off the Minister gets,' she mused, ‘after all his heroic labors.'
The train was bedecked with little red plaques testifying that its crew were members of a Brigade of Communist Labor. The Minister settled his wife in a first-class compartment and then reappeared, sweaty and flustered, on the platform. He was wearing a cloth cap I hadn't seen before, apparently a new acquisition for country life. It made him look like a veteran Chicago cabbie.
When the first warning whistle sounded, the driver embraced him and whispered something into his ear; then the two men waited side by side for the next warning, obviously uncomfortable because they had nothing further to say. Finally, the Minister boarded, the doors were closed and the immensely long train pulled out, quickly disappearing into an underpass. Oktyabrina gazed in its direction for a long moment and sighed profoundly; the end of an era.
Within a few minutes, I was aware not only of the Ministers absence, but also the vacuum he’d left between Oktyabrina and me. For weeks we’d hardly seen each other without his company or talk of him; I realized we were almost strangers again. And although the Minister himself wouldn’t have believed it, he had a certain ease that made his relationship with Oktyabrina entirely unselfconscious. I found myself wondering what to say.
‘Let’s go to the country, Oktyabrina. For a picnic or something.’
‘Not today, thank you. I have ... an engagement.’
We started back down the empty platform, walking in an aimless half step. And no longer together: Oktyabrina was now yards behind me, with a glaring every-person-is-aione-in-the-world expression. When we reached the waiting-room, she sat down on a bench amidst a horde of peasants and their bundles of potatoes, chickens and rags.
‘You needn’t wait for me all the time,’ she muttered. ‘I can quite well take care of myself - in my own country.’
‘Of course you can. I wanted company for lunch.’
‘Can’t you see I must be in solitude now? Have your high and mighty lunch - while the Minister’s delivered to his fate.’
‘Please call me when you feel better.’
‘This is a grievous tragedy. I cannot be expected to rally soon.’
I set down the plastic carryall bag containing her leotards and paraphernalia and walked towards the exit at the far end of the waiting-room. After the loss of the Minister’s 80
support, Oktyabrina’s demonstration of independence was transparent enough, and fully understandable. What puzzled me was my own rather childish uncertainty about how to behave. Was I meant to assume the Minister’s role? What was his role?
Just inside the exit to the street I saw a magazine I wanted at a kiosk and joined the short line at the counter. Before my turn came, the sounds of a swelling commotion echoed through the hall. It was a typical Russian skandal , with a dozen participants squawking indignantly at each other in place of a real fight - and above the other shouts rang Oktyabrina’s newly arrogant voice. It was delivering a long tirade I couldn’t make out at that distance, except that it wobbled with outrage. I hurried back to the bench. A crowd had gathered around it, relishing the action. In the center, Oktyabrina was face-to-chest with a large policeman. He was sweating in the heat of his uniform overcoat, and his expression was slowly changing, like a cop’s in a silent film:
first dumbfounded, then scandalized, finally furious.
‘Will you leave her alone or will you not?’ Oktyabrina screeched at him. ‘She’s a poor, ordinary person. Working class - just like yourself.’
The policeman slowly opened his mouth, but apparently had not yet composed a response.
‘She’s your comrade, for God’s sake,’ Oktyabrina continued, ‘if you could understand anything. Aren’t you ashamed ?’
Oktyabrina’s ‘poor, ordinary person’ was a matronly woman in a fur-collared coat, distinctly better groomed than average. The spectators - who from time to time supported Oktyabrina with cautiously quick and spontaneously dispersed remarks - informed me sotto voce that the matronly woman was an old-time speculator who often operated in this railroad station. This time she had been peddling black-market slips from a suitcase when the policeman spied her and made an arrest. It had happened directly in front of Oktyabrina’s bench.
‘You just have to show off your authority, don't you? All of you. Arrest people - close down laboratories. Ruin people's lives.’
The policeman slowly recovered from his shock. He ordered everyone to move back, gripped Oktyabrina by the wrist and pronounced her arrested. Just then, the spry old speculator saw her chance. She bent down as if to fasten her boots, satisfied herself that the policeman hadn't noticed the movement, and slipped nimbly through the crowd. Soon she was outside it, and scampering towards the exit. Only now did the policeman catch sight of her. He looked back to Oktyabrina, his second catch, frenziedly weighed his choice, and started in pursuit of the old woman, freeing Oktyabrina’s wrist. But the crowd closed ranks, and he lost more minutes struggling through. Someone brushed the cap from his head. By the time he recovered it, the woman had made a clean escape.
At the same time, Oktyabrina dashed the opposite way, towards the emergency exit. She was struggling with the illicit suitcase as well as her own plastic bag, but saw me as she emerged from the crowd.
‘Hello again, Zhoe darling,’ she panted happily, handing me the suitcase and bag. ‘Can you manage with both these little things? They're the most wonderful crinoline slips. Meet you outside in a minute - I'm simply starved
9
At lunch, Oktyabrina began questioning me about my apartment. It had occurred to her that it was time to pay me a call, ‘just to see how a bard of current events actually lives'. On the heels of her triumph in the station, it was futile to impress her with the risk. Not one (sober) Russian in a hundred will visit an apartment in the foreign colony; at the very least, it means an entry about him in a big black book. 82
But Oktyabrina did promise solemnly not to draw attention to herself as we entered, and her costume gave her a fair chance of being taken for a foreigner, provided she kept mum.
In one sense, precautions like this are useless, together with any and all conspiratorial safeguards observed with Russian friends. Kostya and I, for example, realized that the KGB had known about us for years. By now they surely knew about my friendship with Oktyabrina. Still, there is always a pressure to be as careful as you can, if only for the relief of taking some kind of action in face of the danger. And perhaps a larger benefit accrues too: one reason why a few Russians see Westerners without interference may be their observance of certain discretional rules.
Oktyabrina rehearsed her part. I parked the car in the lot behind my building and we emerged laughing, according to the script. Oktyabrina nodded in vigorous agreement at my steady stream of booming English; she understood nothing of course, but managed to control her giggle. When we approached the sentry in the courtyard, she held her breath and strode past with a passable imitation of nonchalance. In the safety of the lift, her triumphant grin unfolded: she knew she could dupe another silly policeman, and I had to admit I thought she had.
"Not bad for a dancer, my beauty. Perhaps you should act/
"Zhoe darling, you stole the show. You can really talk that funny noise/